


Caught Between Two Worlds

by lar_laughs



Category: Leverage, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Amnesia, Challenge Response, Community: caffeinatedmagic, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-23
Packaged: 2017-11-06 17:15:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lar_laughs/pseuds/lar_laughs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>***This is now a multi-chapter story.  Sorry for the change of title.***</p><p>The worlds of Leverage and the Avengers collide as one of the Leverage team members appears to be someone no one expected her to be.  Now, she has to pick up the pieces of a life she thought was hers and a life that is expectd to be hers.  Neither one fits very well any longer.  And which man does she want?  The man who introduced her heart to love or the man who introduced her to herself?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dead is All Relative

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story for the Multimedia Crossover Challenge at [caffeinatedmagic](http://caffeinatedmagic.dreamwidth.org/16172.html)
> 
> Thank you to Aster for the speedy beta and to Beth and Randye for thinking this was a cool idea.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parker isn't normal, as most people consider normal. Maybe instead of it just being "who she is", it's really because she's someone else entirely but doesn't know it because a certain mastermind criminal has her under a spell.

Parker had funny dreams. The first time she’d ever thought to share them was when she was stuck in that loony bin (although Sophie told her to quit calling it that) and the drugs she’d been forced to take had lowered her inhibitions. They’d asked her to share her dreams and her tongue started moving before she ever gave it permission.

“In my dreams, everyone wears black. They can crawl up walls or fly around without needing wings. Some can shoot well and others can run without ever getting tired. They’re all pretty. So pretty. And they help people.”

Those six sentences had gotten her an increased dose of whatever it was that made her happy all the time. It had been hard to dream when she was so happy which should have made her decidedly unhappy, but she hadn’t cared. Not then.

For weeks after leaving the loony- uh, sanitarium (okay, she was trying and that had to count for something - besides shes loved the way that sounded in her head, all posh and accent-y like if Sophie was saying it), Parker didn’t dream. She didn’t think much of it until the first time the dreams suddenly started back up, furious at being denied by the medication that had coursed through her body.

When she woke up after that first time dreaming again, there were tears on her cheeks and clogging up the corner of her eyes. There had never been tears before. However, there was always the ever-present persistent ache in her chest, as if she was missing something very much, all the time, even though she couldn’t remember anything she didn’t have.

Then Archie entered her life. The old man came into her life with a minimum of turmoil and told her stories of how he’d helped her when she was child, learning all the crazy things she knew how to do, and she believed every word that came out of his mouth even though she didn’t actually remember doing anything like what he said. He told her he’d taught her how to be a thief. That hadn’t seemed right at the time but someone must have taught. Everything before that first meeting with Nate and the rest of the team was fuzzy. Besides, with all this new information she felt normal. 

Just when he entered her life, the dreams escalated, leaving her shaking and worn each morning. Parker couldn’t shake the feeling that they were trying to tell her something but she couldn’t figure out what that was supposed to be. How was she expected to figure out dreams when everything during waking hours was so hard to understand?

One morning, she tried to talk to Sophie about the dreams but the woman had only made a face, the one that she got when Parker tried to do something the rest of the group considered irritating and odd, and offered her something to help stop them. All Parker had to do was sniff at the pills the woman handed over to know they were too much like the medication forced on her at the loo- sanitorium (see, it was getting easier). Even though she’d assured Sophie she’d take them, she flushed them down the toilet, watching them whirl out of sight without feeling bad that she’d lied to Sophie.

It took her several months before she could open up about them again. Archie faded into the background and so did the dreams, until there were several nights in each week where she didn’t dream of anyone in black. One day, Hardison was pushing her to tell him something personal and the only thing she could come up with was the dreams. Everything else that he wanted to know was fuzzy and he already knew the memories with Archie. There didn’t appear to be anything else left inside to tell.

“I have dreams.”

“Uh, I think we all dream.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “That’s not what I mean. I have... dreams.”

“Nightmares?”

“No,” she let the word elongate as she struggled to think of a way to explain this to him. “Not really. I mean, I wake up crying sometimes but-”

“You wake up crying?”

That wasn’t what she’d expected him to take from the story but she couldn’t think of any way to derail the conversation once he started talking about suppressed memories. While his ramblings were interesting, she’d just wanted to share them with someone else to see if they could help her unravel what they might mean.

The discovery came one cruelly cold morning when she could see her own breath. Christmas had come and gone and everyone had stayed together in a cohesive unit for the holiday, to please her. She didn’t know what it was about the holiday that always had her aching to be with other people, decorating everything in sight as if she was afraid the ghost of Christmas Present might take offense and send them socks full of coal.

There was talk of strange doings going on in the city but that was nothing new. Since moving to Portland, there were always strange things going on. Not a lot of criminal antics but just odd. Sometimes she wished they’d go back to Boston but it was a wish she couldn’t figure out how to explain to Nate or any of the rest of the group. Boston felt like home, if only because it was the only one she could remember. Portland just felt wrong. And cold. It was always cold here.

She blew on her fingers as she waited for the signal. For this mission, she was mostly doing surveillance but she had every hope that they would need her to slide down the side of the building for some reason or another. Even if they didn’t officially need her to, she was going to when this was all over. It was so boring taking elevators all the time.

“Having fun?”

For a moment, she thought Eliot had said something over the comms until she realized that the voice had come from behind her and not from her ear. It was deep like Eliot’s rumblings but it didn’t conjure up the security his voice had always given her. No matter what, she knew that Eliot would protect her.

But this voice came from the shadows here on the roof. Narrowing her eyes to better focus, she struggled to figure out what sort of flaw in the plan this was. Security guard? Member of a rogue team out to foil their plans? Random person hanging out on the top of a ten story building for no apparent reason?

It was ridiculous being cautious when she was out in the open, nothing but open sky and flat roof. Still, she found herself crouching into a defensive position as she turned to face the conversationalist. Light glinted off glass, just long enough for her brain to give a jolt of remembrance. She’d seen that same glint before. It was off a pair of black sunglasses, the lenses so dark it was impossible to see the eyes behind them.

Like in her dream.

“Always. And you?” Her hand groped for a weapon that wasn’t hanging from her belt. Had never, in fact, hung from her belt because she didn’t carry a weapon and she never wore a belt. Still, her hands spasmed as if searching for something to hold onto. 

“I’ve been better.”

“Have you?” Her voice cracked, pitching high so that it sounded as if she was scared. Or nervous. But she wasn’t. Not at all. Eliot was only a call away. In fact, he should be coming in on the comm any moment, reassuring her that he was on the way if she was in trouble. They’d laugh about this later and she’d let him rib her because she would tell him she was in trouble and he’d come save her. Eliot would keep her safe. Hardison would do some sort of hocus-pocus with his computer and everything would be right with the world again.

But the man stepped out of the shadows, the lights glinting off the dark leather of his outfit. “I thought you died.”

Once again, her voice betrayed her as she struggled to get out the word, “Died?”

“As in, never coming back. I saw you... die, Bobbi. At least, I thought it was you. Turned out to be a body double.”

Anger began burning away the fear. “My name’s not Bobbi.”

“Sure it is. Unless you want me to call you Barbara.” His smile was a slice of bright in the darkness. “But I thought you hated that name.”

“My name is Parker.” For some reason, she emphasized the word. Whether for his understanding or because it felt comforting to hear it again, she didn’t know. “And this is my rooftop. You should leave.”

Eliot wasn’t yelling at her over the comms and Hardison wasn’t fretting. In fact, there was only the slight hum of static that either meant she was the only one on the comms or hers had suddenly stopped working. Taking it out of her ear, she made sure it hadn’t suddenly broken apart. When it passed the initial inspection, she stuffed it back into her ear but angrily pulled it back out again when she realized that there was something else going on. Most likely, the feed was being interfered with.

“What if I don’t want to?”

There was something very pleasant about his voice. Something that made her want to smile at him instead of wearing the fierce grimace she wouldn’t let fall off her face, no matter how gooey her stomach felt. It was worse than it was with Hardison. She had to press her legs together in hopes that the persistent tingling of excitement would die down.

This was wrong. He was the enemy. She shouldn’t want to haul the enemy closer so she could plaster her body against him in search of the warmth she hadn’t realized she’d been missing since... since forever.

“LEAVE!”

He just kept coming but now he was pulling out a bow and selecting an arrow from the quiver on his back. “I don’t think so. Not until you and I work this out. Just don’t hate me too much for this, okay?”

Before she could scream, she felt the bite of metal on her upper thigh. When she looked down, horrified to see an arrow sticking out of the meaty part of her leg, she started to say something in protest but it jumbled up in her head and got even worse when her lips and tongue tried to work together.

As she felt the blackness of the night engulfing her, Parker began to understand how her dream and this man fit together. Not... good....

***

“Is she awake?”

“Just barely.”

“I’ll go let Bruce know. He’ll want to try dosing her again before too long. Who knows what that serum that Crossfire gave her really did to her. Here’s hoping it only messed up her memory.”

“Yeah.”

She wanted to do something about the grimace of sound he used for the word. She wanted to stop him sounding like the world was coming to an end in fifteen minutes and he hadn’t gotten everything on his bucket list crossed off. She wanted... wanted to kiss him. But she didn’t know who he was. Didn’t know who she was.

For that matter, she didn’t know who she was. The only thing she did know with some certainty was that her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton balls and her skin like it had been lit on fire and snuffed out right before it got to the extra-crispy stage. It hurt to breath and even more to move so she stayed where she was, trying to pretend like she wasn’t alive.

“Is she coming around?”

“Seems like it.”

“Better get this second stage of the antidote in-” but she didn’t hear the rest of his words because the sun exploded behind her eyes and fried every nerve ending to a crisp before dying out and leaving behind a black void.

***

When she opened her eyes, the first thing she could see was Clint hovering over her. “You alive?” he asked, his gruff voice and haggard appearance explaining some of why she was flat on her back and feeling like death had played around with her internal organs.

“Barely. What happened?”

He blinked, his reflexes slow enough that she knew she’d been out of it for awhile. The last thing she remembered was... well, wasn’t that convenient? She couldn’t remember anything past when her eyes opened and saw Clint. That was going to make him crow with delight so maybe she didn’t tell him that right away.

“You don’t remember?”

“Remember what? You look horrible. I’m assuming I look worse.”

Dark curls and sleek ermine tresses hovered on the other side of her vision. With some difficulty, she turned her head enough to see Bruce and Natasha hovering over her. Natasha looked more serious than normal and... hadn’t she been a red-head last time she’d seen her?

“When’d you color your hair?” she asked, her throat beginning to rasp from overuse.

“Six months ago.”

That wasn’t right. She’s only just come up from the darkness and the girl had most definitely been a red-head the last time she’d seen her. “How long have I been out of it? Give it to me straight, doc.”

Bruce cleared his throat. “About two days.”

Yet Natasha’s hair had been a different color. And the more she concentrated on Bruce, the more differences she noticed in him, as well. Breathing through the pain, she turned her head back to Clint. “Was I dead?”

“Yes... and no. You were in Portland. Boston before that.”

“Portland? God, I hate Portland. Might as well have been in hell.” She grimaced, hoping to put a smile on his lips, but instantly regretted it. Her skin felt tender, like she’d been given a complete graft over every inch of her body. Any movement sent the nerves firing in odd ways that had her wanting to grit her teeth and pant through the pain. “How long?”

“About four... years.”

Her eyes opened wide and she no longer cared about the pain any movement caused as she looked from Clint to Natasha to Bruce and back to Clint. “Four years? As in three hundred sixty-five times four? Someone do the math for me. I can’t concentrate.”

“One thousand four hundred sixty. Give or take some days for leap, uh,” Bruce lapsed back into silence when Natasha elbowed him in the side. “Long enough.”

“Damn straight it was long enough. Four years?”

Clint dropped out of sight but she could still feel him beside her. There was a whisper and scuffling as Natasha and Bruce beat a hasty retreat. They were alone, something she should have been happy for if not for the betrayal sluicing through her veins at the thought of being left alone for four years.

“Crossfire got to you that day we went to rescue Peter.” Clint’s jaw moved against the side of her arm as if he was afraid of getting any closer to her but needing to touch her in some tiny way. She was glad that she couldn’t see his eyes. Glad for the time to register the information without his own hurt magnifying hers. “I only saw it from a distance. He snapped your neck. I watched the whole thing, Bobbi. I picked up your body and brought it back to headquarters and they told me there was nothing they could do. That you were dead.”

“You go off the deep end?” she asked, knowing from the way he was telling her the information that he still hadn’t dealt with it well. Knowing Clint, it had involved a lot of self-recrimination and shots of whiskey. The way Natasha had been barely meeting her eyes said she’d tried to help him through his grief, most likely in the only way she knew how for the torments of the soul. She couldn’t fault either one of them. When Clint had died the first time, she’d gone a little crazy herself. But that was just between her and Steve. No one else had to know anything they’d done in the middle of the night, behind locked doors.

His only answer was the movement of his head, the scruff of his beard scraping against the sheets.

“How’d you find me?”

“Bruce figured out that it was a doppelganger so we figured you were still alive somewhere, probably being used by Crossfire for his own purposes. We looked high and low but never found even a hint of you. Fury got some intel on this group of do-gooders awhile back. The feed was fuzzy in most of the reels they sent us but there was this blonde who kept jumping off the side of buildings. She looked familiar. I cashed in some markers and convinced Fury to let me go check it out. Just to get rid of the nagging feeling that she looked and moved familiar.”

“And that girl was me?”

“That girl was you.”

She didn’t know she was crying until his finger traced the glistening track from her ear to the corner of her eye. Instead of trying to pull herself together, she gave in to the overwhelming desire to break down. 

When the sobs subsided, she asked, “Was I happy?”

“What?”

“In the feeds. Did I look happy?”

His hesitation told her everything she needed to know. Whatever happened, even if she never got the memories back of the last four years, she needed to find out what her life had been like.

***

The key fit snugly in the lock, turning with just the slightest bit of pressure. Bobbi took a deep breath before she pushed the door open. “Hey, guys,” she called out when found herself staring at four pairs of surprised eyes. When no one asked her where she’d been or why she’d disappeared for six days, she knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. had done their job with the debriefing. Pity. After the memories had come back of her time with Nate and his team, she’d wanted to be able to tell them the truth of who she was on her own terms, not the way that it was probably offered up.

Of course, she should be thankful for the help because it was going to be tough enough trying to explain that she’d been under the influence of a very powerful spell, one that Crossfire, as “Archie, the dotting father figure”, had come around several times to reinforce, and hadn’t meant to convince them she was someone else. Parker had been the first name that had come to her mind, thanks to her recent work with Peter.

Eliot was the toughest one to face so she turned to Hardison first, even though she wanted nothing else but to get it all out in the open so she could deal with it and leave feeling better about herself. The one thing she had in common with Clint was her horrible habit of holding on to guilt like a talisman. This guilt could be purged and so she would, if only so she could move forward.

“I-”

“They said you were a super hero.”

“Actually, I’m a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. More of the hero, less of the super.” His eyes bugged out as she confirmed what he’d been told. She could see the hero worship beginning to reach higher levels in his system. “I didn’t mean to lie to you.”

“But you did.” This was from Eliot. As she turned to stare at him, she could see the resemblance to Clint. No wonder she’d pushed him away just as hard as she’d clung to him. And Eliot had let her, never refusing any comfort she’d ever needed or turned her down for a sparring session.

Hardison was cake compared to the bitter look she would need to clear out of Eliot’s gaze. No excuses, though. He wouldn’t believe a single one of them. Wouldn’t accept any of them. 

She raised her chin up a fraction of an inch. “Is it a lie when it’s the truth at the moment? And even then, it was the only truth I had to tell you. I’m not apologizing for what I did to survive. I... wasn’t myself.”

“You’re still the same kind of crazy, no matter who you are.”

It was impossible to keep the smile from breaking out and she ducked her head. “Yeah, I guess I am at that.”

A hand stretched into her line of sight, tentative but there for the handshake if she was willing. “If I’d realized you worked with Steve, I wouldn’t have been so hard on you. That man’d make anyone crazy.”

Before she could think better of it, Bobbi reached forward and pulled Eliot into a hug that she never would have before. It wouldn’t have dawned on Parker to hug anyone, the contact too much for her fraying senses. But Bobbi needed the physical contact. Needed to know that they were going to be okay.

“I didn’t want-” she started to whisper into his shoulder but he cut her off.

“No. Don’t gloss over it. What happened to you was horrible. I’m just glad we could be there for you.”

She pulled away then, not eager to start spilling tears onto his slightly wrinkled shirt. Instead, she smiled up at him. “If you ever get tired of Portland, we could always use a good man.”

His smile was rueful. “Me? A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent? I don’t think they’d take me.” But his look hinted at more secrets than she had time to delve into today. She turned from him to offer explanations and hugs for the rest of the team but she gave him one more glance as she finally got up to leave the apartment for the last time.

 _Reconsider yet?_ her look asked.

 _I won’t be a stranger,_ his said.

It was enough.


	2. Does Not Play Well With Others

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi isn't Parker but she isn't Bobbi either. Not anymore. Not where it counts. Before she can move on, she needs to go back to make sure that she hasn't missed anything.

It was hard to immediately jump back into the thick of things when Bobbi didn’t really know where she belonged. The passage of time evident in so many ways that she almost forgot that she’d changed just as much as the people around her. The past four years was like a dream now, only vapor and partial conversations. Surely she was the same and everyone else had done all the changing.

Not surprisingly, it was Steve that mentioned something. She’d felt him watching her whenever they were in the same room, his eyes seeing everything without passing judgement.

“How are you settling in?” he asked one night when they met in the hall of the newly minted Avengers Tower, just another of the new things she was having to come to terms with.

The question was honestly asked and Steve’s smile was honest, yet it held a question. He sincerely wanted to know how everything was going. It was a testament to her true state when she folded her arms over her chest in a defensive posture and answered coldly, “I’m doing well, thank you for asking.” If she’d stuck with that answer, he may have let her walk by but she added, “But you know that, don’t you? From my file? I’m sure it’s gotten thicker in the last week.”

“It was an innocent question. I’m not prying. Or, I wasn’t prying. I am now.” He leaned against the opposite wall, his own arms now crossed over his chest to mimic her posture. “Let’s pretend I never asked that question and, instead, led with this one. What’s got you running hot these days? You’re usually so cool.”

She seethed with a rage that only assured that she wouldn’t be trying to deny his words. “I think the key word is _usually_ , isn’t it? There’s nothing usual about me anymore.”

“You’re right.” She blinked as she heard him agree with easy patience to her bitter words. “It was poor choice of words on my part. I apologize.”

“If you tell me I’ve been through a lot, I don’t know what I’ll do.” Her words came out of a clenched jaw but she let her arms fall to her side. “Because it wasn’t prison. It wasn’t even any sort of torture. It was... nice.”

His smile was wide. “Nice? That’s all? It was only nice?”

Because she didn’t want to meet his eyes, she found small details to concentrate on instead. The tiny crack in the paint that would cause Tony to throw up his hands in irritation that the job wasn’t done well the first time around. The tiny bit of hair that she noticed laying against Steve’s ear, a sure sign that he was going to get a hair cut soon, trimming it back up to within the exact standards of the military that belied his background. The faint odor of sulfur in the air filtering in from the labs on the floor above this one.

“It was like having a family,” she finally answered, her eyes snapping shut as she fought against the panic that clawed at her stomach. This was the one thing that she’d never said to anyone since coming back to this old life. No official document stated this sentiment in black and white. It was thought that she was adjusting. She knew this for sure because she’d broken in to look at the official document in her folder after the last visit she’d made to the S.H.I.E.L.D.-appointed psychiatrist. 

To say this to Steve was tantamount to a slap across the face. The only way she knew her missile had hit its target was the slight hitch in his breathing. As a person out of time and without a family, he’d set about creating another with the members of the Avengers and the few S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives that could put up with the antics and neediness of the super heroes on a full-time basis.

Bobbi had been one of the first to cross over on a permanent basis. Clint had been reluctant but now he didn’t seem to mind. Another fissure of pain and panic at the thought of Clint had her clutching her stomach.

“If you don’t-”

“I don’t fit anymore,” she interrupted before he could say anything that she would feel she needed to further apologize for. “It’s me, Steve. Not you or any of the rest. To me, it feels like you changed but it’s really me. I changed.”

“We changed, too. Every time we leave, we come back different. Changed. You know that, Bobbi. We make allowances. We shift and mold to the new. We-”

She shook her head, interrupting again before he could make her feel better about these treasonous thoughts. “No. Not this time.”

This time the silence was pregnant with Steve’s intent to understand. “Is this about Clint?” he asked, his voice dropping low for the first time in case anyone came by.

“No.” But the word had lost its force as she, herself, realized that these feelings were about Clint. “It’s... no.” She thought better of having to explain herself as she realized that she needed time to think about these duplicitous thoughts before saying them out loud where they would be on record, even if it was only in Steve’s mind.

What she was thinking was more of a treason than if she walked through the door and declared to the news media that she had trade secrets to share with the highest bidder. Instead of allowing herself to be talked into saying anything more, Bobbi opted for the less popular variation on this ending. She turned and quickly walked away from the man who held her future with the Avengers in his hand.

***

Her current state of mind _was_ about Clint. Or, rather, Clint and Natasha and the fact that they didn’t look at each other. Not even a little bit. If one’s eyes strayed too far to the other side of the room, the other froze and immediately found something else to look at in the opposite direction.

As tells went, this one was a doozy. Not surprisingly, all thoughts about tells and the like made her think about Eliot and Hardison. She missed her friends, more than she’d ever thought she would. The very idea that they were out there, having fun without her, was enough to drive her to distraction. In time, she knew the anger she felt at being pulled away from them (the fact that she had walked away was becoming hazy under the weight of all these new revelations about herself) would subside and she could think about them without breaking into a cold sweat and feeling nauseous. 

Trying not to think about them only gave her a headache and made her more angry. These very people, the ones who claimed to be her friends, had pulled her from them. When she gave these thoughts much deliberation, they welled up inside her and bad things happened. Think like snapping at Clint when he’d done nothing but ask her if she wanted to go out to dinner (which she would have enjoyed if only to enjoy a meal that didn’t include trying not to see Clint and Natasha not seeing each other) or provoking Bruce when the conversation turned to his newest research. She wasn’t sure why she said some of the things she did to the gentle man, only that she wanted to wound people who didn’t appear to be wounded so she wouldn’t be the only one. It was no fun to pick on Clint who only gave her a confused frown or Natasha who smiled at her with brilliant brittleness.

The first time it happened, everyone appeared to think that they’d heard wrong. Even Bruce gave her a wan smile, as if he wasn’t sure how to act because he didn’t know what had just happened.

But the second time almost got her killed. As she stared up into eyes rapidly loosing their humanity, Bobbi realized that breathing was nice. Since Bruce’s arm was pressed against her windpipe, it didn’t look like she would be breathing again any time soon. Her fingers tried to pry at the band of steel wrapped in skin but all communication between her brain and her muscles was getting convoluted and sparse. It was a determination to breath that kept her straining and stretching.

As spots began to swim in her vision, she became aware of a roar of pain and then the blessed flow of oxygen began to stream back through mouth and nose in a rush. No arms struggled to right her. No one hovered over her to see if she was breathing.

In fact, there were more people around the prone body of Bruce, the shaft of at least three arrows sticking from the meat of his upper thigh, than came up to check on her. When she struggled to her feet, one of her hands out for balance while the other touched the tender skin of her throat, just for the assurance that she was truly in one piece, Bobbi could see the ring of people that were suddenly fixed in place like statues.

“Thanks for the help,” she rasped out, eyeing Natasha as if she might have been controlling Bruce’s actions with her mind all along.

Clint held up his bow. “I did what I could.” His answer was accompanied by a small smile that broke through the confusion still staining his cheeks and darkening his eyes. “We all figured you wanted to kill yourself since you were the one who said... I don’t think I want to repeat what you said. He might not be fully out and come after me next.”

“I’d greatly appreciate it if you didn’t do that again. Bruce is already a little crazy about the Russians getting hold of this newest serum. If he thinks you really meant what you said, he might go to ground again and it took me three days to find him the last time he got paranoid.” Natasha doesn’t have a smile to waste on Bobbi but that’s fine with her. “Besides, we haven’t given you grief about your foray into the world of the other side. The least you can do is extend us the same courtesy.”

“I didn’t-” but she was finally recalling what she’d said with startling clarity and the embarrassment of it stained her cheeks. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to, now am I?” Without a backward glimpse, Natasha followed in the wake of the medical crew that had come to lug Bruce to the Infirmary and start the process of un-arrowing him. Whatever was in the weapons to knock him out would take time to be filtered out with anti-toxins, a process Bobbi didn’t envy the man after her bout with the same sort of course.

Bruce had been the one to administer those drugs, she reminded herself. He’d helped her when no one else had been able to. In essence, he had saved her. She had repayed him by likening his work to that of the kind the basest criminals filled up their time with.

Misplaced anger was turning her into more of a monster than Bruce’s alter ego could ever be. Without stopping to explainin her retreat, Bobbi walked out of the room. In fifteen minutes, she was walking out the front door of the tall building, a bag of necessities secure in the bag on her back. In one hand, she held the black bag that had been a part of her life when she’d been Parker. In the other hand, Parker’s cell phone that had been mysteriously delivered to her that very morning. She liked to think this little excursion was sanctioned even if she’d never asked permission. If it wasn’t and she’d read the signals all wrong, she’d probably never gain entrance to this building ever again.

***

Eliot didn’t believe in fate. In fact, if asked, he would have given a terse answer along the lines of _You make your own fate, stupid. Try harder and you won’t be surprised next time._

So, it wasn’t fate that brought Parker back to him. It was stupidity. When he looked up and saw the familiar blue eyes peaking at him from the small opening near the ceiling, he thought he was hallucinating. There were enough drugs in his system that it might have been possible that he was just seeing things and there wasn’t a blonde-haired rat trying to get his attention.

“What?” he asked out loud without thinking. The drugs were making him stupid, making him forget everything he’d ever learned about how a prisoner should act and react. Prisoner? No, he wasn’t a prisoner. He was lunch. This wasn’t the typical crowd of grifters and cheats. The team had poked their collective noses in the middle of something they shouldn’t have even known existed. That he even knew about it was a product of a life he preferred not to think about, probably never would have if Parker hadn’t turned out to be Mockingbird in disguise.

“How bad are you hurt?” she whispered loudly.

“Not hurt. Drugged. Making me shaky. I can’t get the ropes off my hands.”

“Drugs?”

“Don’t know what kind. Nothing I’ve ever experienced before. I don’t think they got the dosage right, though.”

“Why?”

He lowered his head, trying to fight against the wave of nausea. “I think I’m supposed to be unconscious. Feels like something that should make me sleep. Being awake isn’t probably a good thing.”

“The others?”

“They didn’t send you?” That wasn’t good. He’d figured Parker would bring him news of a classic Hardison plan that would try too hard and take too many steps. A plan was a plan and he wasn’t going to argue with anything that got him out of here.

There was a scuffling as she began to lower a rope. When it was close enough to the floor for her liking, she began to crawl out of the hole, her head pointed to the floor as she climbed down the rope like a lizard. When her feet were clear of the opening. she swung around like an acrobat so her feet were back underneath the rest of her body, all of her weight still supported by her arms.

When she dropped the last few feet, he got a good look at her butt. The one thing he’d always really liked about Parker was her butt and he told her that now, nothing standing between his tongue and his brain. She only gave him a wan smile and narrowed her eyes.

“No, they didn’t send me. You’re the first one of the team I could find,” she continued as if he hadn’t said anything, stupid or otherwise. “Where are they? Here?”

“God, I hope not. I’m pretty sure I was the only one that got taken. We thought they were taking pensions from little old ladies. Turns out, they were actually taking the little old ladies. Don’t even think they cared about the money.”

“When’d you figure out you were dealing with Skrull?” Her voice was muffled as she leaned over to examine the ties keeping his hands in place. Even though he couldn’t see her, he could smell her hair. It always smelled like citrus and trees blossoming in the spring.

He might have murmured his thoughts out loud again but she chose to keep ignoring his mutterings, something he should thank her for later. “Before they brought me up to their spaceship? They were lazy. Two of the guards looked exactly alike. That’s when I figured we were dealing with shapeshifters and convinced them to take me before the rest of the team came along and got themselves deep into the same shit I now find myself in. Didn’t know they were Skrull until just now. Guess I should have figured it was them but I’ve forgotten more than most people will ever know.”

The ropes around his wrist loosened enough that he could pull his hands out, with some help from Parker. As he massaged them to get more feeling back into them, he thought of something that had only just now gotten through his fogged mind.

“You aren’t Parker, are you?”

“As much as I ever was. I’m not a Skrull, if that’s what you were thinking.”

“No. Your name, I mean. It’s not Parker.”

“Bobbi,” she offered as he tried to come up with the right answer to his own unasked question. “Because I know you aren’t stupid enough to call me Barbara.”

“And you’re not,” he held out his hand, struggling with the concept of what he was trying to say. Because he couldn’t figure out a better way to say it, he held his hand out, palm up. “You’re not here.”

“Oh, I’m real.”

He shook his head, irritated that his thoughts weren’t lined up and neat. They jumped around, flickering on a thought barely long enough for him to grasp the meaning before they flittered off again.

“You’re not _here_ ,” he tried again. What was he trying to say to her? What did she need to understand? “Not with me anymore. Not... not here.” He lowered his hand because it hurt that it was hanging out there all alone. Just like he was. Alone.

Her own palm landed on his chest, over his beating heart. “But I’m always right here.”


	3. The Important Part of Conversation is Not Always the Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha confronts Clint and Bobbi confronts Nate.

Clint didn’t turn when he heard his door open and the sound of someone slipping inside. He had a good idea who it was and what they wanted from him. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to say anything for several minutes, not until the sun had gone down completely and the city was busy relighting itself.

When he finally moved to face her, Natasha was perched on the side of his bed. She had settled in which meant she would have let him push her out the door if he didn’t want to talk. The problem was, she was the only one who would understand.

“She left. I watched her walk away.”

“It’s probably for the best. Right now, I don’t see how the two of you could have a decent conversation.”

He shook his head. “No, I meant to say that she left and I didn’t go after her. Had no desire to go after her. She walked away and I felt nothing. Not happiness to see her finally figuring out that she needed to work some things out. Not anger that she’d done it without telling me. Nothing, Tash. Not a single emotion is coming to me right now. I have nothing.”

It wasn’t until she reached up to pull his hand down that he realized that he was rubbing at the side of his jaw, right under his ear. “Is it hurting?”

He shook his head, letting his hand drop away from hers because he knew it would get harder to stop touching her the longer he kept touching her. “Just irritating. I’m still trying to get used to them.”

“At least the wounds have all closed. You don’t look quite like the crispy man you were before those skin grafts.” Natasha reached up to smooth her hand down his jaw, tracing the most obvious of this new batch of scars. “Did you tell her what happened?”

“We never really had a chance to talk.”

Natasha frowned. “What? She was here for-”

“I know.” Clint stepped away and held up his hand to stop her on the off-chance that she might decide to follow after him. Right now, he needed distance from Natasha because he had emotions for her. Oh, so many emotions. “What was I supposed to do? Every time I got close to her, she looked like she wanted to run away. And then she’d look around the room like she needed help to keep me away and she’d see you and her face would get stormy, like she just needed the right excuse to come after you.”

“You could have given it to her, Clint. I’m a big girl. It wouldn’t be the first time that Bobbi and I have locked horns.” The _over you_ was left off the sentence but it was implied.

Before she’d disappeared, there hadn’t been any reason for Bobbi to be jealous. Clint and Natasha had only been friends. Good friends. Good friends who shared a history and a common goal. Then the bottom of his world had dropped out with Bobbi’s death and Clint had needed someone to put the pieces of his heart back together again. Natasha wasn’t the only one he’d turned to but she’d been the one to do the most good.

When his world had shattered again, in the form of a blast that took down two buildings, boiled his skin and permanently injured his hearing, Clint and Natasha had clung to each other for support. She and Bruce had nursed him back to health and Tony had set to work to make him the tiniest hearing aids that he’d ever seen. 

He’d only been weeks into full recovery when they’d found Bobbi again and he’d told Natasha that they had to end things. She’d agreed readily enough. It was only right, after all. They couldn’t very well spring their relationship on Bobbi when they weren’t even sure what it was that they felt for each other.

Clint was a little more sure of what he felt for Natasha now that he’d had some time away from her. There were so many times he thought to himself, “I should tell Tash...” only to have his brain immediately seize up as remorse flooded his body. To make it worse, he was pretty sure that he was the reason that Bobbi had been acting so strangely. She knew about his indiscretions. That had to be the reason for her attitude change.

Natasha cleared her throat, reminding him that they’d been having a conversation before he’d faltered back into the dregs of his worst nightmare once again. As always, she was spot on when it came to reading his mind.

“This isn’t your fault.” When he started to protest, she cut him off. “This is about Bobbi. About how her life is in turmoil right now. This isn’t your fault unless you told her to go after Bruce who is, by the way, not blaming you for any of this. Nor is he blaming her. We all have to adjust.”

“It shouldn’t be this hard,” he whispered.

“That’s life for you. Deal with it, Barton, or give up. Those are your only two options.” With those sage words, that found their mark with unerring accuracy, she turned and left the room as silently as she had come.

***

“So.” The word was laced with all the words that Nate wanted to say but couldn’t. Bobbi didn’t blame him. She had a hard time believing her words even though she’d lived and bled their truth.

There was still the slightest bit of skepticism in them, reminiscent of those days of dealing with Parker, the girl who was off-center and forever coming in from left field with an idea that made no sense. Bobbi wished she had some sort of explanation for him, something along the lines of _I swear, I wasn’t crazy then and I’m not now. I was just missing pieces of me._ It felt like an excuse, though. She was who she was. 

And so she let the word stretch out into silence. Bobbi was tired of apologizing for the past. Damn it all if she was going to suddenly start having to apologize for the present. She’d said what she’d come to say, even before she’d discovered a drugged and dazed Eliot being held by some Skrull that hadn’t been on the radar of any of the Avengers. Not that she was so sure they would have told her if they’d been monitoring the situation, recent events being what they were.

Sophie laid a hand on Nate’s arm, bringing the standstill to an end. “What he meant to ask you right away is how you’re doing. Since he _forgot_ in the stress of hearing about Eliot’s plight, I’ll ask for him. How are you, Bobbi?”

The name slipped out of Sophie’s mouth as if she’d been using it all along, but it wasn’t surprising considering this was the woman who was able to mix and match characters (complete with name change) on a whim. It was a skill, one that Bobbi envied her.

“ _I’m_ fine. It’s the rest of you that need to be worried about-”

“And so we shall. But they weren’t chasing after you so it’s not like we need to head for the bunker right this minute. It’ll give us time to catch up.”

That was when Bobbi realized what Sophie was getting at. She needed to explain herself or Nate and the rest of the crew would pull up stakes and disappear, probably so completely that even S.H.I.E.L.D. would not be able to find them. This was just the polite way of doing it, since the overbearing silence hadn’t worked to crack her.

“It didn’t work.” Even though she kept her voice quiet, it felt like a yell in the quiet room. “I went back like I was supposed to. I dropped into my old life and tried to make it work. My old clothes. My old room, although I hadn’t been there very long before this happened. My old boyfriend. They wouldn’t let me start back at my old job. Now, I don’t really blame them.”

Hardison began nodding like he understood exactly what she was talking about. When she turned to glare at him for interrupting her train of thought, he held up his hands and inclined his head. “I’m just saying, I feel you. Same thing happened to me when I tried going back home after my first year of college. Everyone wanted me to be the same person. Hell, I wanted to be the same person. I went crazy within three days, hitchhiked all the way back to campus and broke into the dorms. Spent the entire summer holed up in one of the janitor’s closets on the main floor, dodging campus security and hacking into the campus internet. Best summer of my life.”

“That’s a nice story but,” Sophie started to say but he shook his head, irritated that he hadn’t immediately been understood.

“We’re her college dorm and she hitchhiked back to us. Don’t you see that? Only difference between her story and mine is she found Eliot on her way and I doubt she needed any wifi connectivity. You changed, Par, er, Bobbi. You became something different and you can’t go back and expect it to be the same.”

“It’s what I am. I can’t stop being Mockingbird.”

He grinned at her. “Sure you can. They do it all the time.”

To prove his point, he turned his laptop around so that the screen was pointing toward his captive audience. He’d pulled up one of his conspiracy theory web pages, this one garish with a background of stars and stripes. It looked very much, Bobbi decided, like Captain America’s outfit.

“From time to time, new superheroes are observed and all notes of the addition to the team are made at this site. Some of the additions, we’ve noticed, have the same stats. Maybe not strength and speed but the things that don’t change. Height. Weight. Hair color, if we can see it. The masks make it hard to tell features, of course, and I would think they’re hard to see out of. If you ask me-”

“Hardison,” Nate growled, a familiar enough sound that Bobbi felt her throat close up with unshed tears.

“Right. Fine. Back to the task at hand. So, I’ve been checking this site out more and more since you’ve been gone. Just wanted to... well, I wanted to get to know your teammates, I suppose. Make sure they’re keeping you safe.”

 _Keeping YOU safe_ , she wanted to retort but didn’t.

“And I’ve noticed something. The kill rate of super heroes is pretty high, if you look at this site. But then, a couple months later, another will take over the place in line and, well wouldn’t you know, they look a lot alike. There’s talk about a new hero taking the ranks soon. There was a death-”

“A what?” Now she was listening, even if his previous conversation had started to lull her to sleep.

“A death. Or a reported one. No one found a body.”

“Who was it?”

“Um, let’s see.” Alec began to scroll through the pages, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth. “Says here it was Hawk- what?”

He’d stopped talking at Bobbi’s scream, looking around him for something to either shoot at or run away. “What did I say?”

“Hawkeye?”

“Yeah.”

She grabbed for the computer, trying to see what it was that he was seeing. “But he... I saw... No. This isn’t right.”

“Happens all the time.” With some deft handwork, he wrenched the laptop away from her before it dropped from her boneless grip. “There’s even talk that there’s been more than one Captain America. Of course there is. Like we’re really going to believe that the guy was under the ice. Good story but-” Alec was smirking until he looked up to see Bobbi’s lost look turn into a hard frown. “What? What did I say?”

“Thank you for answering a very important question for me, Hardison.”

When she didn’t elaborate, he closed the laptop up and shoved it into the bag he kept under his chair, just to keep it out of her way if she decided to really blow a gasket.

“And what question would that be?” Nate’s voice carried the weight of the decision he was still trying to make.

“Whether or not I could give it all up. To be normal. But I can’t live my life getting information from a website that is spotty, at best. I could never give it up. But I do have to find a place where I belong. Not the old Bobbi. This new Bobbi who has a little bit of Parker in there, as well.” Bobbi pushed her hands deep into her pockets so that she didn’t have to see them shaking. It was all getting to be too much for her to handle and it would have been nice to have someone to talk to. Instead, she did the next best thing with the resources she had available to her.

Taking a seat on the couch, to get off knees that were threatening to give out as well as putting her on a less defensive position with Nate, she started the conversation over again. This time, she kept her irritation and attitude out of the telling. From the easing in Nate’s face and the true smile that slipped onto Sophie’s lips, she realized that she’d done just the right thing to gain their trust. For once, in the last few days, she’d picked the right path to take.


End file.
